Chicago Apartment History – 4+1's Traditional Cache
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Chicago Apartment History – 4+1's
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This series of caches highlights the history and variety of Chicago’s multifamily architecture.
This cache brings you to an example of Chicago’s four plus one ("4+1") apartment buildings.
It is a medium-size container sufficient to hold small trade items and travel bugs.
Unlike the tightly packed tenements and row houses of cities in the eastern United States and Europe, residential development in Chicago was originally dominated by single-family homes. By the time of the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, a large part of the population, including many factory workers, could afford what was then the extraordinary luxury of a single-family detached home. Entire neighborhoods of “workman’s cottages” – small one-story or story-and-a-half frame or brick houses - were erected on all sides of the central business district and many can still be seen today in neighborhoods like Bridgeport, Old Town and Bucktown.
Chicago’s first apartments appeared in a “flat craze” serving Chicagoans made homeless by the Great Fire of 1871.
The city’s characteristic two-flat and three-flat apartment buildings began to be interspersed with single-family houses. Tall apartment buildings first appeared in 1882 and newly fashionable “French flats,” or apartment buildings were built in affluent areas such as the Gold Coast.
Chicago’s 1923 zoning code allowed a generous building envelope along the lakefront. On the Gold Coast and in Hyde Park, the affluent middle classes and the wealthy built apartments reaching 23 stories and containing a variety of apartment configurations.
This cache brings you to an example of Chicago’s four plus one ("4+1")apartment buildings.
The simplest definition of a four plus one is a five story apartment building where the first floor consists of the lobby and a parking lot. It is often cited as a building type that is unique to Chicago, a fact which is dependent on how the building is defined.
The term is “four plus one” is unique to Chicago. In other cities with five story apartment buildings with underground parking, it is very likely that people refer to them as “apartment buildings” or “condos,” whichever they may be. Four plus one refers to two things; the height of the building, and a separation of functions (the parking lot). This implies that the elements of height and functionality are the ones that define the four plus one.
The first four plus ones in Chicago were motels in high density areas like the lakefront, River North, and the southern vicinity of Grant Park. Zoning amendments allowed motels to be built in Chicago beginning in 1953. From the early 1960’s to the early 1970’s, four plus ones were constructed on the north side of Chicago as high density apartment buildings.
Four plus ones are built on either single or double lots. The common Chicago lot is 125 feet deep and 25 feet wide. Four plus ones built early on in 1961 or 1962 are often on single lots, while later examples, and the majority, are built on double lots. Because four plus ones were designed to be economically expedient money generators, it follows that nearly every example occupies as much of the lot as possible. This is always done in the same way. The building straddles the sides of the lot, but is set back about fifteen feet, the minimum, from the sidewalk. These buildings are squeezed into lots, fulfilling the minimum requirements of zoning and building code, while maximizing the number of apartment units.
Built in 1971, 532 W. Roscoe is an example of a typical Chicago four plus one. The building stretched from lot line to lot line and has parking under and behind the building. You’ll see many other examples in the surrounding blocks.
Source: forgottenchicago.com, Defining the Four Plus One.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
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